So back when I was a wee gamer with great reaction speeds (which is to say, under 25) I scored a Wii after winning a contest. I would have bought one anyhow but at the time they were scarce on the ground. It came with Wii Sports which ate up most of my time, but I also bought Super Monkeyball (I was terrible at this game) and Twilight Princess.
As a born and bred Zelda fan, I assume I would take to Twilight Princess like a fish to water. But as it turns out, I was very very bad at the game — this was when I was just starting to play World of Warcraft seriously and all my instincts were being used up on heal combinations and my shadow priest’s rotation. I still remember that rotation, by the way — 7-4-3-2-1. 1 was mind flay. Shadow priests were dps capped! Oh, the old days.
Which isn’t the point. The point is, I got to the part of Twilight Princess where you grab Epona and chase Ganon’s minions around a field and I could not do it. Was my patience gone? Was I longing to just get on WoW and do dailies? Was I … bad at the game? Anyway I put it down and never picked it up again, which is just proof that my inability to finish games I own is chronic.
A coworker gave me Twilight Princess HD along with a Wolf Link/Midna amiibo, so it went on to my games I have to play list and I dutifully dusted off the Wii U, which saw very little use at this point. And I can confidently say that probably what made me so miserably bad at the original Wii release was motion controls. They were clunky back then — and only slightly less clunky these days. (I just remembered that I bought the Wii Rabbids game — part of which involved slamming doors on rabbids in portapotties via motion control — and now I’m just lost in horror. Forgive me.)
Turns out, Twilight Princess is a lovely, atmospheric game. It felt sweetly nostalgic to sink into such a classic take on the franchise — sure, it’s a bit odd with the whole Link can turn into a weird wolf ridden by a child of the shadows — but the feel of it is very inline with Majoras Mask, Ocarina — even A Link to the Past. The dungeons were satisfying, the side quests infuriating, and the characters totally bonkers. There’s really nothing else I ask for in a Zelda game, except that it not be on train tracks and involve stylii and blowing into a mic. I do ask that of every Zelda game.
Oh, also, it features this odd creature and her son. When I encountered her in the very first temple, I put the game down, picked up my phone and sent a series of increasingly agitated texts.
This is, by the way, why I love nintendo so much — the chance to ask “what the HELL, Nintendo?” every game. Bonkers: that’s my jam.
The Actual Worst 